ABSTRACT
SIR ALDO CASTELLANI was born in Florence, Italy, on September 8, 1876. He was educated at the universities of Florence and Bonn, receiving his M.D. in 1899. He spent some time in the London School of Tropical Medicine, and in 1902 was sent by the British Royal Society to Uganda to study sleeping sickness. He discovered the cause of this disease, a trypanosome which he demonstrated in the cerebrospinal fluid. In 1903 he became Professor of Tropical Medicine and lecturer in Dermatology in Ceylon Medical School, where he remained until 1915. During this period he made basic observations on yaws, lepothrix, copra itch, and pulmonary mycoses. In 1915 he became Professor of Tropical Medicine in Naples, with subsequent service with the Italian Navy during the first World War. After a second period at the London School of Tropical Medicine, as Director of Mycology, he served from 1924 to 1930 as Professor of Tropical Medicine at Tulane University, in New Orleans. During this period he wrote the selection we have chosen. In 1931 he founded the Tropical Institute in Rome, and until 1944 he held the post of Professor of Tropical Medicine at University of Rome. He was Surgeon General to the Italian Forces in Ethiopia in 1935–36. He has been physician to King George of Greece and was medical adviser to the Italian High Command in World War II.
